The Trick is to Keep Breathing
by The Samurai Chef
Summary: COMPLETE. After ten years as an uchideshi, Goemon was all too eager to apply his skills and find employment under Sandayu Momochi. He soon came to realize it wasn't at all how he had expected it to be. 5 YEARS BEFORE GREEN JACKET. Please read and review.


**Author's Note:**

Nikki, here. I know Mon-centric fiction isn't very popular, moreso if there is no romantic content, but I will forever be at it! :) I don't own ANY of these characters (with exception of Ryota and Shinji, of whom I only make passing references;) however, the words with which I describe Goemon's situation are my own. This short fanfiction is in fact another one of those excerpts from a roleplaying post of mine, actually submitted only last night. Though there was only one episode Green Jacket episode and one Red Jacket episode that showed Sandayu Momochi and Futaro Jinen, respectively, I felt it was important enough to include in my interpretation of Mon's backstory. However, for the longest time, I couldn't reconcile the idea that Goemon had studied under one Sensei, who was kindly and full of wisdom, and in the same lifetime, worked for crazy ol' Momochi. It was something I've avoided writing for fear of it taking too long - but at last, where the roleplay I am in is now, I was inspired to build this bridge for myself. I'm actually happy with it.

If you are interested, read my fanfiction entitled _WORDS LEFT UNSAID_, to understand Goemon's relationship with Futaro Jinen (again, it isn't canon; just an imaginative elaboration.) Not mandatory, but since all my glimpses into Goemon's past are never just an isolated event, it would probably help you to better appreciate what is here. Anyways, it's just a suggestion.

As everything else I've done, this piece means especially _a lot_ to me, so please do not steal it. If you (and of course, I mean this in the general sense of the word) truly are a writer, you don't plagiarize other people's work. Everyone has their unique writer's voice: just have faith in yourself and keep searching and writing until you've found it. :3

Thank you for reading, and AGAIN, I do not own Goemon and his Sensei; I've just toyed with them to illustrate a point.

And just one more thought to bear in mind, regarding the characterization of G - this event would have happened fourteen years from the present, so enough has changed since, needless to say. He was fresh out of Futaro Jinen's dojo, too. In youth, every matter seems to be one that is life-or-death; in Goemon's case, it actually was (though he was also much more affected by things then, and didn't know how to suppress his emotions half as well). But yes, I've rambled too much.

Enjoy.

* * *

Nine kilometres away from the dingy network of alleyways behind the izakaya, the rancid stench of sake-breath and fecal matter still clung to his nostrils, shifting the watery contents of his stomach as he tore across the woods. Dew-laced air whipped against his flushed, sweating face, his eyes stinging wetly. The moon burned pale against the velvet darkness of the sky, the pines casting strange, jagged shadows over the forest floor.

Throwing a wary glance behind him, Goemon reeled behind a tree. He spent a few minutes in a desperate struggle against an upsurge of vomit, forcing in dizzyingly raw lungfuls of air, his back pressed up against the trunk. His mouth was dry – his chest heaved and burned – his shoulders trembled. The night was full of chittering, hissing, the stiff crunch of grass. His knees wobbled and quivered, the weight of his leaden exhaustion settling in.

_Umeda had helplessly crumpled to his knees, and had decided then and there to resign himself to his situation. "Oh...oh God... You must be one of Momochi's men..." His hair was askew, patches of sweat darkening under the arms of his suit._

_With a wary eye on his surroundings, Goemon stepped forward without word, Zantesuken bared and burning cold, angled for the man's throat. In a deft swipe, it would cleanly slide through flesh and bone, meeting no resistance. He had wanted mindless hate to possess him, to allow him to take someone's head without a second thought. Frown twitching, he had tightened his sweaty grip on the hilt._

_The man's porcine face scrunched like a baby's. A hot, foul smell suddenly permeated the air. The ronin had grimaced in disgust, trying to detach himself from the twinges of pity that tightened his throat._

_"I-I swear," The businessman spluttered desperately, saliva dribbling down his chin, "I'll, I'll have that money tomorrow... Tomorrow, three o'clock... please... tell him... I thought I would have it by now, but- -"_

_"Shut up!" The ronin had viciously cut him off in a voice that had risen from a raw place inside him, his eyes glinting with a predatory ferocity. A part of him had taken dark satisfaction in seeing Umeda flinch from his intensity and bury his face in his hands._

_"God, I... I didn't mean to have Tanaka killed..." He whimpered in place of an agonized howl, his fingers bunching into fists; he pounded his forehead in a fit of frustration. "To hell with that promotion!! I wasn't... thinking... If had known... I wouldn't have... God, please don't tell my wife..."_

It wasn't safe here. Nowhere was safe. Pushing off the ground, Goemon took off again towards Sensei's house behind the dojo, his breath misting in short spurts. All the way, he cursed his nerves and Umeda's cologne-scented wallet that bounced in his keikogi like a rock the size of his fist.

From the soft light behind the rice-paper window, Goemon gathered that Sandayu Momochi had been impatiently awaiting his return. He flexed his fists, unseen hands wringing his gut.

There was no turning back.

Following a brief exchange of stiff, obligatory formalities, he was given sanction to show himself in and did so, with the meek, reluctant mien of a child anticipating punishment. The door slid shut behind him with a soft hiss. Inch by inch, he reluctantly relinquished his freedom.

Hastily shedding his sandals, he stepped up from the cold floor of the genkan that had seared the soles of his feet and settled immediately into seiza. He bent low to where his forehead met the tatami mat and held his position for a moment, feeling his instructor's cool, calculating eyes on the crown of his head.

"_Goemon_, is it?"

The young apprentice swallowed past the burning knot in his throat. "...Yes, Sensei."

"Mn." Momochi sat cross-legged in a musashi-patterned nemaki worn loosely, having since changed from a yukata and a fringed, foreign-looking vest. His head was wreathed in an aureole of blue-tinged smoke, his eyes unfocused, half-lidded as if in rapture. Laid out before him were an ashtray, a sakazuki, and half-emptied bottle of the prestigious Hakutaka sake. The glass was tinged green.

Goemon flushed to his ears, squirming inside. He was unaccustomed to being received by any instructor so casually. He didn't know where to look. Apart from the dimly glowing floor lamp, the room was bare: there were no murals, no plants, no decorative touches, little to indicate human occupation. The bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom were sectioned off by shoji panels.

"Well?!" Squinting now in annoyance, Sensei took a long draw on his cigarette, his puckered lips simian-like. He kept it tightly pinched between the crab-claw of his thumb and index finger as if afraid someone would wrestle it away. How strange, Goemon mused, that he did not use a kiseru."You fool, stop wasting my time." Every word was a jab in the chest. "...You've done what I've asked?"

A dark, ugly thrill rattled up Goemon's spine, sweat pricking the nape of his neck. His clammy fists closed around loose folds of his hakama. "...Yes, Sensei."

"Did anyone see you?"

"...No, Sensei; only Umeda."

The response met with a cackle from a throat hoarsened with drink. Goemon was wide-eyed, unnerved by the look of gratification spreading across a wrinkled face like blood in water, as if a man's death were a joyous occasion. He looked on helplessly as Sensei took a sloppy swig from his cup, decidedly grateful that none was offered. He hadn't the stomach for sake, not now. The corners of the room began to spin, the air in the room sharpening, thinning. Something feral, maddening thrashed in his chest. He desperately needed out, he needed to break away before his feelings could catch up, wild dogs let loose, slavering and snapping at his heels.

Goemon's eyes burned deeply; he struggled not to rub at them. This school hadn't been at all how he had envisioned – how Ryota had made it out to be when he had unobtrusively paid a visit to Futaro Jinen's dojo under an alias, seeking promising students on Momochi's behalf. Jinen Sensei, wearing his patient, long-suffering smile, must have known something of the school's true nature from its cunningly-phrased portrayal of daily life; why hadn't he pulled him aside and imparted his wisdom?

_Jinen Sensei..._ Goemon mused bitterly, unconsciously biting his lower lip. _I know now I was foolish and reckless to have given sway to my ambition, to my recklessness. I am no better than Jinkuro... and now I suffer for it. I should have never left. ...Why?! Why did you not tell me!?_

He met the shrewd eyes of the man to whom he had sold his soul indefinitely, through a binding contract. He was aware he knew too much now; the only way out of his trade would be in death.

"What's that?" Momochi carelessly thrust out his cigarette to point, nearly spilling ash over the tatami; his voice was edged with wariness. "Give it to me."

Head bowed like a kicked dog, Goemon extended both his hands, presenting his bunched up, blood-spattered tenugui like a sacred relic. It was snatched from him with a beggar's greed – and as the cloth unfurled, his heart dropped into his stomach like a stone in a hollow bucket, cold sickness resonating. He was forced to confront his own handiwork. No matter how much he willed it, the token of his kill would never vanish in thin air. The wait was like pulling teeth.

Adjusting his thick-rimmed glasses, Momochi looked more closely, eyes screwed into a myopic squint.

It was a bulbous chunk of flesh, cleanly severed. A _nose_.

The first bark of a laugh came, almost uneasily, before a manic fit overtook him; Sensei threw his head back, nearly flinging his glasses off his nose. Goemon stared frozenly, stunned to the core as if he had taken a punch squarely to the stomach. Bitter realization dawned upon him. For what other reason would his instructor have sent him, unseasoned, to finish Ryota's dirty work but to test his nerves? His eyes dropped as he fought the twitch quirking the corners of his mouth, broodingly grinding his jaw.

"Fancy me to be _Totoyomi Hideyoshi_, do you?" Sensei slurred snidely, his sharp-edged smile cutting to the bone. He coughed wheezily after a moment, clearing his throat, and tapped his cigarette against a glass ash-tray out of place in a home of wood, bamboo, and paper. "Ah, very good, errand-boy... I think you'll do very well in this school. I'll, ah, have... Ryota pickle it for me. ...Now... how old did you say you were, hm?"

"_Twenty_, Sensei."

"Mn." His expression of wry amusement steadily faded, replaced by vague irritation as he chewed on this for a moment. Bushy brows furrowing, he played at transferring the cigarette clumsily between age-spotted hands while shakily refilling his cup. Sake dribbled over his wrinkled knuckles; he didn't seem to notice. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed its contents down his throat, wincing as it scorched its way to his stomach. He laughed again after a moment, as if just having caught onto a joke made hours prior, but this time the sound was tight and abrupt, mercilessly scornful.

"...Don't think you've made your place around here already with your first kill," Momochi said bluntly, darkly serious. He waved the cigarette emphatically to mark distance. "You have a long road to travel, Goemon-sama. Ryota, er, and Shinji – at least forty a piece, hah."

The young apprentice's pale face was absent of expression while he sat, numb and deaf, staring unseeing at the mat. The intensity of his gaze verged on boring a scorching hole through it. Nausea billowed inside him, his stomach feeling achingly weak, too weak from where to draw a proper breath.

"No," Goemon blurted out before he could catch himself, blood roaring through his temples. It all came up in a dizzying rush, like vomit, his voice muffled in his own ears - "I don't want it to become easier..."

A slap of a hand against the tatami mat cut him off, sharp as a crack of a whip.

If Sensei had taken some satisfaction in seeing his student flinch, it was lost on his tight-jawed, blackened scowl. "Ungrateful dog!" He spat at the top of his lungs, bristling, the veins in his neck straining against already flushed skin. "How dare you?!"

Still in seiza, Goemon immediately threw himself into a bow in a desperate attempt at conciliation, his voice caught in the twisted tangles of his throat. "F-Forgive me, Momochi-Sensei."

"Being my student is a privilege!" Nostrils flaring hungrily, the instructor raged on with a tone of bitter incredulity, firing hard flecks of spit; a jerk of his hand knocked the bottle of sake and nearly overturned what was left. His motions were so brusque, his teeth seemed dagger-like in the blur, teeth that could tear out someone's throat.

"How dare you come here, to my school, and bring this - this insolence, these _'feelings'_ (this was enunciated with a grimace, as if it left an foul taste in his mouth)?! You - you consider yourself a man, a student of iaido?! Full of _shit_!" With his glare still pointedly pinned between the young man's eyes like crosshairs, Momochi, chest heaving, gradually sank back into a seething slouch. He seemed haggard and spent when the dust finally settled, his age showing through as he once again reached out to nurse his bottle – but his resonating words hung heavily in the air as a threat, the air crackling with negative energy.

Goemon blinked hard, a rivulet of sweat spidering down his temple. At any moment, he was certain he would be thrown out the door - in one piece if he were lucky. He hated sitting before a sizzling powder keg, tortured by the anticipation leading up to the climax; he hated the way it pulled his nerves taut to fraying-point, twisting and twisting until he snapp- -

"- -You must have the wallet with you."

Beating cautiously in silence, his heart now ping-ponged painfully between his ribs and sternum. He perceived the tone of dangerous calm like a shift in the direction of the wind, and felt cornered, the walls pressing in on him.

"...How much did you find on him, hm?"

With a pair of rheumy, red-rimmed eyes searching his face, he went blank, his mind chasing its tail in crazed circles. A cold sweat broke out along his backbone, his fingers tingling numbly. He was hardly relieved when he remembered the amount. "Twenty... thousand yen." He envied the cigarette that was mashed in the tray into a juicy pulp, finally put out of its misery.

"Twenty thousand?!"

Goemon's innards shrank when he was met with a shrill echo. His shoulders slumped in defeat.

"...Eight-hundred-eighty-_fucking_-thousand short!!"

_Sumimasen, sumimasen, sumimasen._

_Moushiwake arimasen._

He heaved up apologies, each threatening to lodge chokingly in his throat as he thought of the dream of leading a peacefully uneventful life back in Shimagahara, a dream torn to shreds and scattered into the wind. There was no going back to what was, to those simpler days of shucking edamame and hacking at weeds until the muscles in his arm turned to mush... or kneeling at the kotatsu at the day's end to enjoy a hot bowl of okayu, a piece of grilled fish. It was strange now, trying to come to terms with the fact that he was alone, far from Jinen Sensei's gentle guidance. He felt as if he were trying to walk in sandals two sizes too big.

"...You think you're cunning, don't you?" Momochi said suddenly, with a matter-of-factness made chilling by his intense, unblinking eyes, the whites jaggedly streaked with blood. He had found the time to light another cigarette and was rolling it between his teeth contemplatively, cutting into paper with those sharp, wolfish teeth, smoke coiling from his nostrils. He snorted mirthlessly after a moment, nodding closed-eyed as if to acknowledge a response. Leaving his pupil hanging on his every gesture, he tipped the ash and brought the stick to his lips again, breathing in deeply. He let the fumes swirl in his lungs, relishing his position of power. "Took some of the money for yourself, maybe, thinking old man Momochi would be too stupid to notice?"

Blindsided by a sudden bout of vertigo, Goemon's mouth went numb. He willed his tongue, that heavy slab of meat, to work its way around recognizable sounds. "I-I took nothing, Sensei!" He cried, his eyes shining poignantly, darting sharply from side to side as if searching for an explanation.

"Lies!!" Empowered by a turbulent rush of anger, Momochi shot up to his feet and grabbed a fistful of his apprentice's keikogi, roughly half-jerking him up; the lenses of his glasses flashed hostilely as they caught the light from a bare bulb above.

The tension was electric, as that in a stand-off.

Goemon wasn't prepared to feel him grope blindly inside his keikogi.

Something about the hand insidiously feeling around and the sour, sewage-breath washing up against his face fed the anger and the confusion that had gnawed at the back of his mind ever since he had passed the frightening threshold into adulthood with other uchideshi. He couldn't feel the sting of his nails digging into the flesh of his palms as he stood unnaturally still, his gaze darkening and unreadable.

It had taken Momochi only a few seconds to find the wallet – and while watching him seethe and rifle through the bills, Goemon tried hard not to notice the picture of a little girl in one of the plastic sleeves. His heart grew heavy as he remembered the quivering, anxious thrill he had felt in counting more bills than he had ever seen in his entire life. He had robbed a corpse; it was hard not to envision himself as a sort of despicable scavenger, stripping flesh off the bones.

He had robbed a corpse, and had wrestled with the urge to pocket his share before delivering it into Sensei's hands. But, his sense of duty had intervened, his saving grace, and forced him to consider the consequences. He still had his morals among cut-throats, if it meant anything. It made him feel vaguely better to think so.

Sensei threw down the wallet with a snap, jarring the young assassin to his senses. While a few inches shorter than his pupil, his presence was undoubtedly smothering; Goemon felt as if he had pried open the door to a boiler room and had absorbed the impact of a blast of shimmering, hot air. He averted his eyes more than out of deference while sensing he was under scrutiny. The body language that telegraphed Sensei's lunge went overlooked; a frantic shuffle - tabi scuffing tatami - a hand lunging between his legs - lost in a blur of an adrenaline rush.

Barely biting back a curse, Goemon instinctively stumbled back and lost his footing at the edge where the tatami rose above the genkan floor. As he fell, his head whiplashed against the door with a thud.

Wood vibrating, his skull vibrating.

For what felt like half a minute, he remained slumped against the door as if backed into it by an advancing army, his chest surging threateningly. A sidelong look of animal distrust locked with Sensei's, eyes burning black. It had taken Goemon nearly every ounce of his will to pull back the hand that had defensively leapt for Zantetsuken's hilt; it took that much more effort to remember his place and surrender himself to Momochi's upraised palm, buckling as if his kneecaps had been blown. He apologized tightly between gritted teeth and firmly planted his hands down, dipping into a bow.

The strained display of humility was answered, all at once, with a guffaw that filled the room, inescapable. Goemon looked up sharply, bewilderedly, his head rattling all the while as if someone had taken a jackhammer to it. The blow he expected cruelly never came.

When the laughter faded at last into memory, the manic gleam in Momochi's glassy eyes had also grown dull as if he were bone-tired, or experiencing a rare pang of sensitivity. While backing off with a deliberate slowness, he remembered to take a drag from his cigarette. It had withered away into a little stump.

"If I ever catch you with stolen money," Momochi said gruffly with a hint of a grim smirk, carrying himself composedly, "I will personally slit your throat. ...You're lucky to be alive."

The severed nose on the floor, still cushioned in cloth, then earned an admiring glance; he was better aware now of what he stood to lose if he were to cut his apprentice to pieces. Pivoting sharply, he promptly sat himself down with his back turned, thusly ending the conversation.

"...Now get the hell out of my sight."

"_Hai_; thank you, Sensei." Goemon replied at last, mechanically, tasting the metallic bitterness of resentment in his mouth. Straightening his keikogi, he stole into the night and made for his private sleeping quarters empty-handed, still struggling to shake off the red fog hazing his vision, clouding his judgment. A scream clutched at his throat, his face tight and fiercely emotional.

He spent the night awake, staring at the ceiling.

It had felt good to run his fist through a paper window.


End file.
